River Falls, Wisconsin, USA
June 17, 2013

BioDiagnostics Inc. (BDI), an independent seed testing laboratory serving the needs of the global seed industry, has added bioinformatician Ruhi Rai to provide its clients with a greater level of understanding in the areas of genome selection, association mapping, linkage analysis, QTL mapping and gene annotation.

“At BDI, we believe that investing in people is as important as investing in technology, if not more so,” said BDI president Quentin Schultz. “Our technology allows us to generate millions of data points with unquestionable accuracy every week, but the real value we provide our customers is in helping them determine the best way to apply that data. Ruhi plays an important role in successfully guiding our customers for molecular breeding and genomic testing services.”

Bioinformatics is a multi-disciplined field that integrates computer science, mathematics and engineering to process biological data. Rai comes to BDI with extensive experience in applying bioinformatics to human genomics, most notably the six years she spent deepening her knowledge in the cytogenetics laboratory at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, where she performed complex clinical laboratory testing on biological specimens. In general terms, the use of bioinformatics to understand human genomics is complex compared to the process used for agricultural crops, meaning that Rai has an inherent advantage in her current work at BDI. In her short time at the lab, Rai has applied that advantage to projects as diverse as marker selection for sunflowers, association mapping for corn and a new kind of genome research for the onion market.

Rai will work intensely with the lab’s Illumina iScan system, a platform that allows BDI to scan entire genomes using single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers at extremely high densities to identify marker–trait associations in genome-wide association mapping projects. “My work at BDI is especially important for plant breeders and research and development efforts,” Rai said. “It’s amazing what can be learned from statistics, and my specialty is interpreting huge amounts of relevant statistics to generate information that our clients can use.”

Part of Rai’s work will be to develop and improve BDI methods for data storage, retrieval and organization, as well as building tools to harness cloud computing and “big data” handling at the lab. These capabilities will make BDI result-reporting even faster, and keep the lab at the forefront of the testing industry.

BDI is an independent testing laboratory serving the seed industry around the world. It has developed the most knowledgeable and experienced team of seed technologists in the industry by combining years of agribusiness experience with a strong academic foundation. BDI understands the technology behind the test, and it consults with customers to improve processes in plant breeding and seed production. Research and development at BDI drives innovation to provide new solutions for the ever-changing needs of the seed industry.

Website: http://www.seedquest.com/id/b/BioDiagnostics.htm

Published: June 17, 2013